


The Pleasure in Compliance

by impertinences



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: Adult Content, Angst, F/M, Hate Sex, Implied Relationships, Nazis, Self-Hatred, Short One Shot, Survivor Guilt, Thoughts of Assassination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7587970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impertinences/pseuds/impertinences
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because this was how it was.  This was how she imagined taking her revenge - not on him, but on herself.  <i>Au revoir, Shosanna</i>. </p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pleasure in Compliance

**Author's Note:**

> Because this is a short one-shot, I did not waste time explaining much. Like, for example, why Hans and Shosanna are in a theater together or how their relationship became what it is that I describe. 
> 
> A better writer would probably do these things, but I'm admittedly lazy. Fill in the blanks as you see fit, and enjoy!

_The earth is taken; this is not your home._  
\- Karl Shapiro 

 

_Au revoir, Shosanna._   

Farewell.  

Goodbye.  

It had taken years for her to understand, a labyrinth of time where the seeds of fear and hate had grown their blades.  She had become fierce and hard, French and beautiful.  What she had been was a closely-guarded memory visited only at night, only when Emmanuelle needed to remember that she was not Emmanuelle at all... that somewhere, beneath a wooden floor, she had left behind a frightened child with hair of brown.  Before she had said goodbye to all of that.

_Au revoir, Shosanna._   

The words shocked her to her core.  Farewell, he had said to her.  

Now, when she looked into his eyes, she understood his meaning.

 

\--

 

The opera was called _Tristan und Isolde_.  A German classic, written by Wagner, it was the tale of a young Jewish girl who had fled from the bloodied, murdered bodies of her parents to escape the monster who had left her with nightmares of noise and light and death in the midst of the grass and mountains and streams that had been her only safety.  A moving parable of betrayal, violation, lost innocence, and the utter lack of justice on Earth, Emmanuelle felt sick from the first note.

Thank goodness Colonel Landa was there to take her by the hand and smile at her with the warmth of a true gentleman.  Through the silk of her gloves, and the leather of his, she could feel nothing.  She could feel _nothing_.  

In a beautiful, glorious crescendo of ringing German from the stage, a sudden and nameless terror ran through her body from stem to tiers.  The shock of it sent her heart into convulsions, hammering at the inside of her body as if it no longer wished to be party to her existence and longed to be set free.  Her mouth cinched tight, her cheeks flushing as red as her painted lips.  Hidden behind a veil, she was thankful for the darkness of the theater.

His hand squeezed hers tighter.  Gently.  He was there with her.  He wanted her to know, and he knew it didn't take his touch to remind her.

In an instant, Emmanuelle was upright, composed.  Her flushed cheeks became pale once more, pool blue eyes shining like marbles.  The back of her throat grated like sandpaper in a drought.  The urge came from time to time, but tonight at the opera with her consort it was strong enough to roil her stomach.  

Hans Landa needed to die.  Had she forgotten already?

It was a special kind of helplessness, one that gave way to a violent and animalistic fantasizing.  The hard walnut of a butcher's cleaver in her tender palm, her wispy limbs flailing at the limits of their strength to cut into him.  She imagined the noise, most of all - something not at all expected, maybe.  A lower, thudding slap, like the meat packing her father had done when she was three, and she had brought him milk from the farm.  Thwack.  Into his neck, or his face. Warmth surrounding her and protecting her, salvaging her from a world that believed in no warmth or protection.  Bathing in his blood and feeling the evil in him cower in fear.  Stabbing into him, driving with every muscle in her body. Opening him, opening herself.  Making him feel.  Wrapping herself around him.  Driving inward.  Pulling deeply, fingers around her throat, in her hair, her back arching upward until he slammed her back to the bed sheets and made her ache with punishment.  She had never felt so full, never known what this could do to her as he ripped the cries from her throat.  There was no exorcism for this.  The golden cross hung on a chain around her neck.

He pulled on her flaxen hair like a set of reins and told Emmanuelle to squeeze her cunt down on him like the French whore she was.  There was no sin she could have crafted to equal the nameless pleasure that accompanied her compliance.

Because this was how it was.  This was how she imagined taking her revenge - not on him, but on herself.  _Au revoir, Shosanna_.  There had been a wild pleasure in his voice then, and it had haunted her in her nightmares, in dark alleyways, in the cellars where even rats did not dare to hide.

_Au revoir, Shosanna._   A frightened girl, lost to the world, who had run away with only the face of evil to guide her path.

Emmanuelle Mimieux squeezed back.


End file.
